Re: Your MOST INFLUENTIAL Screen Characters

Originally Posted by MonL

I was a very young kid then in 1968 when my elder brothers took me to Nation Cinerama Theatre in Cubao to watch the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was the height of the US-USSR Space Race (The Eagle won’t land yet on the moon until 1969), and anything that touched on the space travel genre then was red-hot. It was truly a work of cinematic art, with dazzling special effects that would be surpassed in quantity and innovation only by the next big sci-fi movie that would be shown a decade later, Star Wars. In fact, 2001was the benchmark for cinematic special effects for the said genre.

Some of the scenes were intensely detailed and psychedelic and remained vivid in my memory for years. Yet the only dialogue that I remember was that of the supercomputer Hal9000 pleading to astronaut David Bowman who was lobotomizing him:

“Please stop, Dave. Stop, Dave. I’m…afraid.”

I would only be able to obtain the DVD copy of it in 2003.

However, events in the next 30-50 years would overtake this movie and render it as a futuristic prediction that was not fulfilled, with the supposed Jupiter Mission to have happened in 2001 and the return trip happening ten years later in the sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact, which was shown in the mid-1980s.

The other legacy this movie left was its theme song, which was adopted later in other diverse fields as radio, advertising, pop music(Eumir Deodato’s version comes to mind), TV and other cinema genre (comedy, etc.), and is still in use today.

This film by Kubrik was speculating on the possibility that a machine will leapfrog and try to gain humanity, feelings and all. The scene when Hal9000 pleaded for "life" can be compared to the part when the humanoids learned how to use a weapon for self defense and aggression. From bones used for war to orbital satellites in Kubriks vision. Reagan's "Star Wars Program" anyone? Well the militarization of Space is now complete and AI is part of the war in Afghanistan.

Still, that realization of the humanoids together with the accompanying musical score made a huge impression on me. I watched this when I was young in a Betamax. No impact, just another sci-fi.

It gave me a different perspective though when I watched it on DVD. Darn, so that's what this movie is all about. Wow!

Re: Your MOST INFLUENTIAL Screen Characters

How influential was the Michael Douglas character Gordon Gecko in the real Wall Street? I think every young and ambitious banker / stockbroker / corporate lawyer / con man of that era made Gecko their personal idol. Of course having the slicked back hair and the sharp Italian (or was it Savile Row) suits also influenced how corporate comers and up-and-comers of the age dressed. "Get yourself some new suits..." best advice Gecko gave in that movie, and it felt like he was speaking to the the world at large and not just to Charlie Sheen's character.